


No room for comfort.

by skadagalen



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-03 16:39:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17881400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skadagalen/pseuds/skadagalen
Summary: Well past the time to apologize, jim finds himself pondering the guilt he's tried to bury along with how he's felt about a particular bird.





	No room for comfort.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a long time since I uploaded anything and I feel it's due time to curse everyone with another favorite ship.

The only time it didn’t feel like Gotham had truly crumbled was when everything was coated in a thick blanket of alcohol and denial. At night every once in a while, when they’d close their eyes and ignore it all but each other--- even if just days prior they had been at one another. Nothing unusual for the pair, even if at one-point friendship was a loosely used word and unrequited love once sat heavy above them. The bird never having once spoken of it, but it didn’t have to be for Jim to ever be aware of it--- just simply locked it away within the back of his mind. If he didn’t acknowledge it, then he never had to face how he felt--- that’s how it worked, right?

 

It’s not until each rise and fall for the passing years did Jim feel pressured to start seeing what he did not want to, and when their fair city finally falls he feels scandalized by himself.

 

There’s no time to find or seek comfort for such things as they are trivial compared to everything he has dealt with and must deal with now. Only left to face Oswald each time they encounter each other like things were just as they appeared to be--- only until it is suggested to try and sort out their differences in another matter. One that costs lest time and bullets, both of which are scarce.

 

At first it was through exchanged favors--- all harmless of course. Bullets for info, protection for food, then booze for company.

 

It is during their short alliance that they are forced to see they are alone in the new world--- Jim’s allies are busy and worried--- their interests and guilt don’t align with his. Oswald is just the same--- though his workers are not spoken too and nobody else is smart enough to keep up with what he says. So the blonde is what he settles for when he presents them with a bottle of stolen liquor in exchange for an evening of each other’s company.

 

These nights start as advertised--- they’d drink and complain, confess things of the past and what they felt guilty of. It gave them both a fresh perspective of one another’s reasoning's for their actions in the past, but both agree that it’s the past. Nothing can be done to take away the pain caused to each other.

 

While it remains that way for the bird, Jim is left to realize that the lid he had screwed on to keep everything about how he felt has been torn right off. It causes him to slip up one night, locked up in the other’s so-called fortress they tend to keep to. Accidentally spilling just an ounce of how he felt.

 

These are feelings he’d thought that were once unrequited by Oswald, were gone and dealt with on their end, leaving Jim to deal with it himself. Confessing unwillingly now by the way the bird had questioningly dug into him after the fact. Yet he fails to notice that the drilling comes from a place of injury--- not having healed or moved on either.  

 

Prideful and stubborn, they pair still keep a vital piece of information to themselves the whole night, despite a whole bottle being shared.

 

Their next night together comes after quite some time, both avoiding one another and it takes until they cannot handle that distance any longer. Corny in retrospect, but that detail doesn’t affect the outcome of the evening. One of many that would spark from this--- those nights before simply a prequel as now Oswald show’s Jim with no verbal communication given past his greeting.

 

It would almost make it all worth it--- the years of fighting and disagreements.

 

Jim thinks of it for only a moment before entering the other, a low grumble emanating from the back of his throat--- wanting to bury the guilt and denial he’s carried for years. The comfort he seeks found when he’s far past the point of rethinking his actions, drowning himself in every sound he could pull from the other. Lips expressing every word unspoken against the span of their body--- worshiping in order to ask for forgiveness in silence. As if the orgasm he works from them is the acceptance he sought.

 

But when the bird cries out, and their fingers dig into the flesh of his back--- he doesn’t feel any better. Instead the guilt ways in heavier as it becomes evident that Oswald never stopped feeling a certain way, all while Jim tore him apart--- kicking him when he was already on the ground. It was poor on his end and he’d known it whenever he did something out of spite toward the other.

 

No matter what it was that he could think of that Oswald did, it never prompted Jim to act the way he did--- knowing he could have come up with so many better ways and near the end, he tried. But words never really became actions.

 

Now left to hold them while they carelessly fall asleep against him, Jim wonders if he’s just meant to live with this feeling. Even questioning how Oswald himself felt, but that anxiety and guilt weighs in heavy once more, and he falls silent. Simply allowing them to finally and completely fall into slumber.

 


End file.
